I
s this Sparks’ best album? You bet Uranus it isn’t. But the maelodies are marvelous, the irony delicious, and the whole thing holds up to Whomp wheelie well. The first few times I heard Sparks In Outer Space, I hated it. That’s right. This was the Sparks album with “Cool Places,” after all, arguably the dumbest song they’ve ever recorded. And despite the promise of an Angst-full band on the back cover, Sparks hasn’t sounded this simple and synthetic since their Eurodisco days. But you can’t hate a band who still delivers songs like “Rockin’ Girls” and “All You Ever Think About Is Sex.” Nowadays I see Angst, Whomp and Outer Space (in that order) as something of a Sparks renaissance. You could argue that being reborn as a new wave novelty act is payback for some pretty bad karma, and I won’t deny that I miss the analog excess of the early recordings. Synthesizers were initially intriguing and efficient, but by the 80s they were commonplace and banal. It was the banality of Sparks In Outer Space that first struck me. They hardly seemed to be trying on tracks like “Popularity” and “Dance Godammit.” Could it be that the simplicity is part of the irony? I prefer to think so. In that context, their “dumbest” album might be one of the smartest things they’ve done. I’m not ready to call this album a masterpiece of irony or anything, simply collect it from the company of Rabbits and fold it in with Pants.